Constance spoke with hurried emphasis, hoping to terminate the discussion. She did not desire to argue the matter with Loretta; at the same time she recognized the familiar pertinency of the allusions to dead husbands and wives. Loretta detected Constance's nervous agitation. "I hate to think it of her," she cried with sudden illumination, "but I believe she has badgered you into it!" "Nothing of the kind, Loretta. It's my own free choice. Mrs. Wilson simply made clear to me the Church's side." Loretta sneered. "It's downright cruel, that's what I call it. The Church's side! The Church doesn't recognize divorce, but there's always been ways for the rich--the folk with pull, kings and such--to get the marriages they were tired of pronounced void from the beginning. It was only necessary to show that they had been god-parents to the same child, or were twenty-fifth cousins by affinity, as it's called, or some such tomfoolery. It didn't take Napoleon long when he wished to get rid of Josephine to induce the Catholic Church to declare that they never had been married, though it was a good church wedding before a cardinal. Pshaw! The Church has fooled the people long enough. What we want is justice and common sense." That same cry for justice, that same appeal to common sense; and from what very different lips! Yet though Constance shrank from the coarseness of the exposition, somehow the naked saliency of the argument was more persuasive than Gordon's subtler plea. Her instinctive compassion for the masses asserted itself. The fact that Loretta should have touched at once the crucial point which Gordon's trained intelligence had emphasized struck her forcibly. And after all, what was she herself but one of the common people? But she said: "The scandal in Mrs. Wilson's own family has been the greatest grief and mortification to her." Loretta bridled. "Yes, and when Mrs. Waldo gets her divorce in South Dakota and comes back married again, won't everybody she cares about receive her just the same? In six months she'll be staying in Benham and her mother'll be inviting all the other multi-millionaires to meet her at a big blow-out; see if she don't." She paused, and her eyes took on a crafty look. "What do you suppose she'd say if I were to go back to my man?" Constance sat bolt upright from apprehension. Loretta's air of mystery, which was accentuated by a whispering tone, conveyed to her the true import of the intimation. Yet she would not seem to understand. "What do you mean, Loretta?" "My man; the father of my child. He was in town the other day. He has found out where I am and has been plaguing me to go back to him." "Did he ask you to marry him?" asked Constance, seeking that solution.